Q&A: Daniel Eskola on Unibet's new poker product
eGaming Review speaks to Daniel Eskola, head of gaming at Unibet, about the Swedish-listed operator's poker ambitions following the launch of its standalone product last week
eGaming Review (eGR): You recently launched your own recreational-focused standalone poker product. How has this process gone and what’s the initial reaction been like?
Daniel Eskola (DE): We soft launched the product on 19 February and all things considering it has gone well. As expected, there were some smaller bugs which were not identified in the testing phase, but in general they have been minor and with a resolution time of about 24 hours from discovery to release, we look on-track to meet the March 3 deadline when we shut down the Microgaming client.
The feedback has been great so far from recreational players, but we’ve also had quite a lot of good comments from the poker forums as well. As expected, there have been some complaints from more professional players about the lack of certain features.
eGR: With poker widely considered to be a vertical in decline, was it a risk to invest in a new poker platform at this point in time?
DE: It is certainly a high risk venture to go standalone in today’s poker climate, but we felt that something had to change. Poker was rapidly becoming a marginal product, so at the end of the day it was a risk we were willing to take. We have identified several factors that we think are causing the poker industry to fall into decline and we think we have the solutions. By focusing on recreational players, by making the game more fun, by not allowing external software tools, but not alienating our regular players, we think we can reverse the trend.
eGR: What goals have you set for your poker product in terms of revenues? To beat last year’s numbers or is there a greater ambition?
DE: We have changed our mind set from being rake focused to having a more holistic view of how poker fits in with the other products. So our KPIs for success are not solely rake but other metrics based around making the overall experience more enjoyable for the recreational players. Ultimately we are looking to achieve higher profitability across all products.
eGR: Is there a goal to enter the US and team up with a casino with this in-house poker offering?
DE: Unibet is keeping an eye on the US, but there are no immediate plans at the moment. We want to focus on making this fly in our core markets first and foremost.
eGR: Is there still a future in poker networks?
DE: Yes, there will always be poker networks. By sharing liquidity, software development and various support functions, many operators will have a viable poker product that they couldn’t by themselves. But the number of serious options has been diminishing. Just in the last two years we have seen Entraction disappear and Gtech and Ongame seem to have taken a more re-regulated market focus for their poker.
For operators with sufficient liquidity to go standalone, and who still retain ambitions in the poker market, there is an opportunity. By controlling your own product and its development, you can steal a march on the rest of the industry.
eGR: What other pieces of product innovation are you currently working on?
DE: We expect to launch a complete new casino lobby, which will be one of the best in the market with excellent ease of use, and also introducing new features such as game recommendations based on player behaviour.
eGR: How does Unibet go about cross-selling between poker and other verticals particularly sportsbook?
DE: One of the great features of a poker product is that something is always happening. Further down the road, this means we can potentially encourage sports betting players to play a poker tournament during half time or when a game has finished. Poker players tend to have a greater lifetime than those on other products, and we can also potentially take advantage of that by encouraging more poker play. Finally, as we have full control of the poker client we could further integrate it with the sportsbook.
In other news:
– Betclic faces criminal sanctions from Belgian authorities